Jose Bautista day against the Yankees

Jays v Yankees Thursday April 1 in Dunedin.

Jays lose 5-2.

The last game of the Spring and Tallet pitching. Not a good omen, this guy has one good one, one bad one and today was the turn of the bad one.
This was over in the first as Yankees score two and beat up on Tallet from the first. We had just read about Cecil being sent down and then watch Brian... not good at all, have no idea of that reasoning after Cecil had a great outing yesterday against a much stronger Phillies lineup that Tallet faced this afternoon.
No Jeter, No A-Rod whereas Cecil had the first team to deal with and looked a far better pitcher than Tallet did today. BUT I have no doubt we will see young Cecil in Toronto very soon as the season gets underway.

Meantime back to the afternoon's highlights. Jose Bautista with yet another leadoff home run and this was such an energizer after sitting through the long twenty minutes of tallet's first inning. But what made it even more satisfying to everyone around me was that AJ Burnett was pitching for Yankees. Who scripted that in two games Halladay and Burnett against their former team? Unfortunately today Burnett won the battle but not before getting itno loads of trouble.

Not to be satisfied with his bat, Jose puts on a clinic in right field that made us all realize what we have been missing when Alex Rios patrolled out there.
Jose had a rocket throw from right to nail the Yankee runner at third. he followed that up with a leaping catch to save at least a double and more trouble for Tallet.The Toronto fans are going to love seeing Jose leadoff and play right field this season.

However we have real problems at third base friends. Edwin Encarnacion is no Scott Rolen with the glove, two more errors today. One a throwing error to Lyle that bounced in and the second more serious a ground ball right threw his legs, this was worse than the Buckner error. The problem is he has been making these errors all week since he returned. Made worse is the mediocre fielding by Alex Gonzalez this spring. The left infield is in in big trouble and on this showing is going to hurt the Jays pitching staff who need all the help they can get.

Fortunately we had Johnny Mac out there today who turned a double play with Aaaron that surely must have made Cito think twice about Alex Rodriguez.
Speaking of Cito I was surprised that there was no formal thank you to Cito as it was his last game in Dunedin at least as Manager. Not even a scorebioard tribute ?? Come on Dunedin Jays... Class here. Cito for his part continued his more visible self appearing between innings to praise or not the team. Especially Jose in the outfield prompted Cito to go into dugout.

More on the game, another superb scoreless inning by Casey Janssen, also by Kevin Gregg. Accardo had a bad outing and gave up two more runs to put this out of reach, he may be catching the bus to Vegas if he has any options left.

Well that's it from Dunedin, the removal van(s) two of them are outside packing up as I write. The team heads to Texas with two more games at the weekend with the Astros before season start with the Rangers.
We shall not see them in Toronto until Monday April 12th.It will be interesting to see how they do on the road this first week. I think the team has loads of potential and will surprise many but they will need every break they can get.That means putting out the best team and I for one do not think Encarnacion and Rodriguez are the best that they have in the team. We shall see.

Farewell from a glorious Dunedin. The weather this week has been the best of the month.